July 27, 2023 • 43 mins
The Warehouse and The Music Box were incredibly influential Chicago clubs that became ground zero for the rise of House Music. Under the supervision of Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy, these two house clubs cultivated a new genre of music created by people of color that would go on to form the very foundations of modern dance music as we know it.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
When we think of nightclubs, the sound that usually springs
to mind is that pounding beat, that repetitive but addictive sound,
about twice as fast as a heartbeat. It makes you
want to nod your head and move your body and
get up to dance. The pounding beat at the heart
(00:22):
of house music has an infectious energy about it, and
when house music was born in Chicago in the nineteen seventies,
it drew people from all across the city to an
old building in downtown Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
My name is Karen McCormick. I am a hairstylist in Chicago,
and I'm definitely a house head.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Karen grew up in Chicago in the seventies and she
saw firsthand the profound ways the city was changing. It
had world class sports teams and became home to one
of America's first city funded public art programs. The skyline
got taller, and the construction of the famous Sears Tower
made the city home to what was then the world's
(01:07):
tallest building.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Chicago had changed, the politics had changed, everything changed.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
The city had become the bustling metropolis that we now
know as the capital of the Midwest the Third Coast.
But there was something else in the air too, a
new sound.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
My brother Albert McCormick was a promoter, a huge promoter
in Chicago, Illinois, and he promoted teenage parties and he
was very, very successful at it.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
He'd heard rumors about a hot spot in town playing
new music. So one night Albert had an idea.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
He said, come on, I got this place. I want
to take you too. Now I was like, okay, let's
all go.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
So they got dressed up.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
We were wearing the tight l taking jeans and the
halter tops, and I had on I would never forget
I had on these glitter clods. They were so sharp.
I love the glitter clods.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
And going out to this new club meant leaving for
the party when most of the city was fast.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Asleep because it didn't open till twelve o'clock at night.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
The sky was dark and the moon was bright. As
they traveled downtown, Karen and her glitter clogs walked down
a cobblestone street that led her to the warehouse.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It was at to US six South Jefferson, but back
in the day, to six South Jefferson was a dismal street.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
But the venue on the street was huge and majestic.
It had an exposed brick facade and big curved windows.
There was nothing nearby except for the line that stretched
around the building and the music that spilled out onto
the streets.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It was a long line. Everyone was just trying to
get into this place.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Karen followed the line.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
As people ahead of her started to go in, the
music got louder, guiding her closer until she got to
the entrance.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And you had to walk up a hall of stairs.
At the hallow stairs, there were two men that greet you.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
The men were polite and had smiles on their faces,
but they were the gatekeepers.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
And you don't know if you're going to get in
or not, because they did turn people away. And so
I was like, what is this, what are we going to.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
But her brother reassured her and.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
He said, come on, just come on in inside.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
It all came into focus.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
When we went in. We walked up the stairs, we
got in and it was like, I mean, just people
were everywhere. They were sitting, they were dancing, they were
on the floor, they were congregating.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Karen had entered the warehouse and it was a visceral experience,
one that held Karen by the shoulders.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
And grabbed hold of all her senses.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
The moment she stepped inside, the club opened itself up
to Karen, and she dived in head first.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
It was an entire.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
World She had no idea existed a club that was
about to transform the sound of dance music.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Everybody was just twirling and dancing, and hips and moving
and people going on their knees and steps. It was everything.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
People had come from all over the city to experience
the Warehouse.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You had all wh of life there. There was no boundaries,
There was no one that was not welcome to each other.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
The club was filled with all kinds of people from
the black, Latino and queer community, and they'd all converged
onto the dance floor. It was magical, people from all
over Chicago dancing to the euphoric sound of a new
genre being created right there in the city.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Your ears is so filled with good music.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
The music sounded a little bit like disco, but there
was something about it that Karen had never heard before,
and it flowed through the people who danced at the
Warehouse as if they were simply just a vessel for
the DJ. Karen didn't know yet how profound an effect
the Warehouse would have on her or the city. That
(05:53):
night she was standing smack dab in the middle of
a sea of change. Just as she was, the world
was getting an introduction to house music.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Do you hear this music going boom boom boom boom boom.
You just hear this boom and you're like, what is that?
And then you go down the stairs where it's Pitts flack,
but you see strobe lights going, and they had different
lights going. But more than anything, the room was just
(06:31):
filled with music. The equipment that they had in that
place was like phenomenal, and so it beat every part
of that floor.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
The music that played at the Warehouse was unlike anything
anyone had ever heard before, and soon it would go
from being called warehouse music to just house music. Because
house music was born right there at two six South
Jefferson Avenue in downtown Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
We didn't even think of it as club culture. You
went to that party and you released all your demons.
That's how it worked.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
With dance music that broke boundaries.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
The music moved through you. The base was so incredibly loud.
I mean you felt it rumble your whole body while
you're on the dance or just standing so you couldn't
help but to dance.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It didn't matter who you were, what you were, where
you came from, It did not matter. What mattered is
that we all came together and we all felt one thing,
and that was the music.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
House music would change lives and transform the sound of
the dance floor, and its story started at the warehouse
where a new sound became a new religion, followed by
people from around the city and then the world.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
However it got its name, it's one of the hottest
things going and as Jelavin reports, only be a matter
of time before house musicians become heroes in their own home.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
From London Audio iHeartRadio and executive producer Paris Hilton, This
is the History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs a twelve
part podcast about the iconic venues and people that revolutionized
how we party. Some of the world's most legendary nightclubs
were known for the unique community they welcomed, others for
(08:33):
the cultural movements they started, and some for the musicians
and DJs they introduced to the world. The best nightclubs
champion new music, transform lives, and provide an escape from
life's pressures.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
One more thing. This is the history of some of the.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
World's greatest nightclubs. Not a ranking of every club in
the world. It's an exploration of the spaces, people, and
club nights that made a lasting impact on nightlife and
music today. I'm your host, Ultronatee. I'm a singer, songwriter, musician,
and I found my purpose in club culture. This is
(09:11):
episode four. The Warehouse and Music Box, Chicago, Illinois. The
Warehouse was ground zero for the rise of house music.
It was music made by and for the black, Latino
and queer communities who were looking for a safe space
to get together, let loose, and dance their worries away.
(09:34):
House music began at the Warehouse, but when the Warehouse
closed and its owner opened up a new club called
the Music Box, it became more vibrant and multi layered
before it's skyrocketed to become the genre we now know
and love.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
In the process, house music.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Broke some serious boundaries and left an indelible mark on
pop and dance music. Disco had dominated the music scene
of the late sixties and early seventies, and so many
of the musicians that had been central to the scene
were from Chicago. The Emotions had released Best of My Love,
(10:16):
which had poured onto dance floors across the city. An
Earth Wind and Fire had commanded the charts with songs
like Boogie Wonderland, but by the late seventies, disco music
was on the decline. Some of the backlash was because
people thought it wasn't political enough, and some of it
(10:36):
was because there was a new wave of rock music
taking over the music scene, but a significant amount of
the backlash was rooted in racism and homophobia. The anti
disco movement grew louder and stronger, culminating in what happened
on July twelfth, nineteen seventy nine, the day Disco died.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
It started at a baseball game.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
The Chicago White Sox were playing the Detroit Tigers in
a doubleheader game. The local Chicago rock station w LUP
had partnered with the team to host the Disco Demolition Night.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
It started off as just a stunt.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Posters had been stuck up across the city saying anyone
who brought a disco record to the park could watch
the game for ninety eight cents. In return, before the
second game started, they would get to watch all the
disco albums get blown up. It was a tongue in
cheek thing because the Socks had hosted a disco night
a couple of years before, and the rock station wanted
(11:43):
to make a joke about the fact that there was
a backlash amongst their fans to disco music. But things
got serious really quickly.
Speaker 7 (11:53):
Between games at tonight's doubleheader, a local disc jockey blew
up disco records in Sutterfield, and a crowd responded by
rushing the viear.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
The stunt had ended in a riot that saw tens
of thousands of fans storm the pitch, throwing glass bottles, firecrackers,
and lighters onto the field as they burnt records. It
was a huge deal. Ask around Chicago. Everyone remembers it.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Yeah, my name's Micah Salkind.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Micah wrote the book Do You Remember House Chicago's Queer
of Color Undergrounds. It's a history of house music in
Chicago that profiles the black, brown, and queer architects behind
the genre. The Disco demolition was one of the major
markers of the decline of disco, but the genre had
(12:47):
been on its way out for a while by then.
Speaker 8 (12:50):
You know, in the late seventies, the bottom of the
American disco industry drops out.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Major industry players had slowly been divesting from the genre.
Speaker 8 (13:00):
You know, no one's no one's trying to pay some
French horn player and cellist at Sigma Studios in Philadelphia
to recording new disco music like they were in the
late seventies.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
But the sound didn't just disappear.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Black, brown and queer people across the city still love
the sense of freedom and escapism the disco age had
ushered in.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
So they set out to give it a new life.
Speaker 8 (13:25):
Young entrepreneurial musicians and some of some of whom totally amateur,
some of whom had other you know, musical training and abilities.
We're trying to approximate the energy of that disco music
and you know, creating like this what now sounds as.
Speaker 5 (13:43):
Though it must have been so futuristic.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
At the time, they had the building blocks of disco music,
but they wanted to transform it.
Speaker 8 (13:51):
But I think for them it was just really like,
all right, we have access to these tools, we need
new tracks, like, let's make it just trying to recreate
a sound that that didn't exist anymore using new tools.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
The sound they created with those new tools was house music.
But to understand where it came from, we have to
go to the place where it started, the warehouse.
Speaker 9 (14:16):
My name is Robert Williams, and I'm from New York City, Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Robert was a young black man who'd been born and
raised in New York, but in the seventies he realized
he needed a change.
Speaker 9 (14:29):
I had gotten tired of the red rage of New York.
He was challenging, and my aunt suggested that I had
come to a more late back environment. So she suggests
to Chicago, and I was like, okay. I wasn't overly
thrilled for a moment, but you know, I said, okay, I'll
check it out.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
So he did.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
But Robert soon found out that Chicago wasn't just laid back.
It was a straight up snoozefest.
Speaker 9 (14:58):
He was very boring here to me because I was
used to the bright light and the activity of New
York City. So it was like going from the city
to the country in a sense.
Speaker 10 (15:09):
To me.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Things slowed all the way down for him. New York
was going through a tumultuous time in the seventies, but
it was establishing itself as a hub for some of
the greatest minds and artists in the country. Chicago, on
the other hand, didn't have as much to offer him,
So Robert took advantage of the fact that there wasn't
much going on in the boring old city and started
(15:33):
throwing parties to bring it to life.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
You know.
Speaker 8 (15:36):
Robert was a part of a collective called US Studios
and Day Through Parties that other lost spaces in the
near west side of Chicago, the West Loop and the
South Loop.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
The city already had a black and clear underground party culture.
Speaker 9 (15:52):
We just go like dis first to so speak, socially
or commercially like the clubs and what have you. Then
it means you kind of like went underground.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
People threw parties across the city, but the scene needed
a real venue to take it to the next level.
So Robert decided to sign a lease on a building downtown.
Speaker 9 (16:18):
The building was a three story It was built in
the early twenties and it was out our Deco and
it was like three thousand square foot per four It
was nice space.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Robert commissioned his friend Richard Long, who did sound design
for the legendary Studio fifty four, to do the sound
system for the warehouse.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
But the club was missing something.
Speaker 9 (16:46):
I needed a DJ, so I had to go to
New York and ask them of our friends to come
healthy with the Friday.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
There was a musical shift happening in the late seventies.
Disco was out, but something new was on the horizon.
Robert could hear it, and he had just the right
person in mind to bring it to life on the
Warehouse dance floor. You see, there were two DJs he
knew from back home in New York that he thought
would be a perfect fit for the Warehouse, Frankie Knuckles
(17:15):
and Larry Levan, two DJs who would go on to
become musical legends. But when Robert first met them, they
weren't DJs. They were just annoying kids.
Speaker 9 (17:26):
They were truant when they were like fifteen and fourteen.
I was like eighteen or nineteen, and I was working
for New York Department of Probation and they were under
my case slows yep.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Robert was their probation officer.
Speaker 9 (17:43):
They were juveniles, so I was supposed to be their counselor.
But I was going to the club just like they were.
They were under age going through the club and I wasn't.
But I wasn't exactly being a mentor. I had to
restruct our relationship.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
But when they grew up and were finally old enough
to actually be at the club, Robert began to see
how talented they were. Larry Levan had to stay in
New York because he was in the middle of creating
Paradise Garage, which you'll hear more about in a few episodes.
But Frankie Knuckles accepted Robert's invite to be the DJ
at The Warehouse in Chicago. Even as a kid, it
(18:25):
was very clear that Frankie Knuckles had a gift.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
He was an artist.
Speaker 9 (18:29):
Frankie attended Persons School of Design in New York before DJing,
so he was an illustrator and artist.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
He developed his skills while DJing at New York's Continental Baths,
and Robert really believed in Frankie. So when the Warehouse
opened in nineteen seventy seven, it opened with Frankie Knuckles
as its resident DJ. It was only a matter of
time before crowds began to travel to downtown Chicago to
hear the new sound Frankie was crafting.
Speaker 8 (19:00):
The Warehouse is the birthplace of house music culture, and
I don't think it'd be exaggerating to say. It's also
where the seeds for house music as a genre were planted.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
They didn't know it just yet, of course, but Frankie
would pretty much change the game, earning himself an international reputation.
Speaker 8 (19:20):
Frankie Knuckles is often described as the godfather of house
music in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Frankie had his ear to the ground. He took underground
tracks and put his own spin on it. He knew
exactly how to make the music he was playing sound
and feel like something new. His music was welcoming to
everyone on the dance floor, and Frankie had a way
of mixing his sets together so that everyone could see
(19:46):
themselves in the songs, because for Frankie, it was all
about the song and using the vocals to anchor the
crowd to the dance floor.
Speaker 8 (19:55):
If you've got people from all these different places in
the room, you need to play something for the those
Latino kids from the Northwest Side who love freestyle music.
You need to play something for the Black kids from
the South Side who grew up listening to you know,
funking soul that their parents played.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Frankie became famous for mixing together underground disco soul and
electronic music, them beefing up the rhythm with drum machines
to really get the crowd moving.
Speaker 8 (20:21):
The DJs were cutting across these social boundaries in the
city of Chicago and creating something that met everyone's needs.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
The music Frankie was playing didn't have its own name yet,
but it would soon be known to the world as house.
Speaker 8 (20:38):
You know, if you analyze the music like from a
musicological standpoint and look at like what people were doing
with drum machines, samplers and synthesizers during the mid eighties.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
It sounds like this.
Speaker 8 (20:51):
It's for the floor dance music that is connected to
a history of disco, R and B, funk and soul.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
It's also a whole culture.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
House music was the sound of the bass and snare drums,
the offbeat high hats, and the around one hundred and
twenty beats per minutent tempo. But it was also the
way that DJ's like Frankie Knuckles played it. Frankie had
an ear for this type of music. He felt each
track in his body and wanted you to feel it too.
(21:23):
Frankie made sure that you felt it in your soul.
Remember Karen McCormick. She spent a lot of time dancing
to Frankie's tracks.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
He made sure that you heard lyrics or what the
music was saying, and the music itself was on such
a high lift bass that it made you just move
your body. It didn't give a dance, it didn't have
a name. You just moved your body and it would
bring people together.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
He played each song with deep intention.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And if Frankie knew that it was a good song,
He's gonna make you hear the song. When Frankie would
listen to music, he's not just listening to just some sound.
He's listening to every thing that the person put into
that music, whether it was their strings of violins to
(22:19):
where it was the voice itself. When it came down
to it, he knew how to blend it all. People
could come from all corners.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Of Chicago flocking to Warehouse after midnight just to hear
Frankie play. His sets became so popular in fact, the
stores across the city stocked up their windows and shelves
with the music that Frankie had played at the Warehouse.
It became known as warehouse music, and then after a
while just house music. Frankie Knuckles was the godfather of
(22:49):
house music. He was the resident DJ at the club
that the sound got its name from, and his sets
pioneered a new way of blending music that would go
on to become one of them the most well known
and loved genres in the world. It would go on
to influence clubs like the Hacienda, a club all the
way in Manchester, England, which we'll hear more about in
(23:11):
the next episode, as well as offshoots and reinterpretations of
the Sound all around the world. But the appeal of
the Warehouse wasn't just tied to the music Frankie played.
It was the culture, the community, the ritual they were building.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
We were there every Saturday, you know, the same people
and more were there every Saturday.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
After her first time at the Warehouse, Karen went back
again and again.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
The Warehouse was her place.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
You prepared your week for Saturday. You know, you were
like what am I wearing? And you didn't care how
you looked the rest of the week until Saturday.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Monday through Friday you could be in sweats and a
T shirt. But on Saturday night you looked good and
you dressed so you could dance guys were tons of
leather headbands, tank tops, and girls wore big earrings and
even bigger hair. Once I spent the whole week making
Genie pants for myself and my crew for Saturday night
(24:15):
to show up, and that was it, our stage, our runway.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I will always make sure I had on leg warmers
because you wanted to keep your legs, you know, flexible,
So I would always wear something movable where I can
move in it.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Because people showed up ready to really dance, and the
warehouse wasn't just a place to party. It was a
safe haven too. Remember the backlash against disco music. It
wasn't just about the music, it was about.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
The culture of disco music.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Which had become a home for people of color and
the queer community. When the music had gone underground, they'd
gone underground too. Dancing at house in places like the
warehouse to get away from the harassment and discrimination they
were facing outside.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
The warehouse is born out of a desire to find
a space where black men in particular, but also black lesbians,
bisexual folks, straight people, you know, all kinds of people
could come together without being asked for multiple forms.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
Of identification or given a hard time on the dance glare.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
At the bar.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
It was more than just a physical location. It was
an idea, a feel. It was a lot bigger than
its physical presence.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
The music was about a kind of social freedom that
you couldn't find even in white gay spaces. So it
also you know, it's like black folks partied in different
ways in part because their musical traditions were you know,
born in black spaces, not in white cultures.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
The Warehouse was a place where these folks were free
to truly be themselves without judgment, to escape what was
transpiring both socially and politically. It was a place to
be free to let your guard down.
Speaker 8 (26:07):
You know, there's something about that time of day, right
like the time between ten pm and seven am, where
the normal rhythms of urban life shift and everyone's asleep,
and this is a time.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
Where people can get out of their heads.
Speaker 8 (26:25):
And whether they're doing that with the assistance of drugs
or with just the sheer exertion of their dancing, you know,
I think there is a spiritual quality to that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
People went to the Warehouse every Saturday night to experience
what true freedom felt like. There was a spiritual component
to those nights too. For those who felt discriminated against
and unwelcome by the churches of their childhood, there was
an answer, you know.
Speaker 8 (26:52):
Black folks who maybe have been disconnected from the way
that the church would support that kind of upliftedness, or
black women folks who had that experience, or queer folks
who are searching for something in the city that their
families in the kind of like rural or suburban world
couldn't provide them.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
The warehouse became a church.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
The songs felt like gospel, and dancing felt like worship.
It was a hollowed space, and like church, it was
a place to return to week after week.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
You know, if they were gay and they couldn't go
to church anymore because their family.
Speaker 8 (27:30):
Cast them out, they could commune under the supervision of
you know, Frankie Knuckles. It would be Sunday morning and
they it would be a kind of like continuation of
the party, and you know, maybe Frankie would play some
gospel track at the end of the night to kind
of send people on their way.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Frankie knew what he was doing, he knew what his
dancers needed, and he delivered playing music that mimicked the
way acquire at church, would sing to the crowd to
give people a place to belong, to reach out with
his music and tell them they were loved. The Warehouse
was designed by queer and black creators and became a
(28:06):
place for folks who felt othered in their daily lives
to feel safe, to be temporarily insulated from the racism, homophobia,
and misogyny that remained rampant in the outside world, but
also to express joy. Next, we'll dive into the story
(28:27):
of DJ ron Hardy and the Music Box and how
he took house music.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
To new heights.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
By nineteen seventy six, the political tide in Chicago had turned.
The city's longtime mayor had died, and when his replacement,
Jane Byrne, stepped into office, she began to change the
look and feel of downtown Chicago.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
The downtown area was just changing.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
The renovations happening in that part of the city made
it even harder to keep places like the Warehouse alivetown
changed and became more gentrified. The lease became too expensive
for Robert to keep running the Warehouse, so the club
closed its doors for the final time in nineteen eighty four,
and while the Warehouse was closing for good. House music
(29:15):
wasn't going anywhere. Things had really only just begun because
soon there would be a new DJ in town who
would adapt the sound and give it a twist. Listening
to house music for the first time changed people. Once
they heard it, they wanted more and they would follow
it wherever it went. But house music had become bigger
(29:36):
than Frankie in the Warehouse. House was infectious. House music
didn't just belong to the Warehouse. It became the sound
of the city. And Robert, who created the Warehouse, found
another location. He signed a lease on a former industrial
building at sixteen thirty two South Indiana av And. In
(29:57):
February of nineteen eighty three. His new c was born,
The Music Box, and this is the club where house
music really took off.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
My name is Stacy Collins and I worked at the
music Box as security.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
The music Box wasn't a replica of the Warehouse. It
took the sound of house music and the spirit of
underground clubs and created something new.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
That sound system was something I have never experienced in
my life, don't I can't imagine how anybody could go
to that dance floor and not want to dance because.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
The music moved through you. The base was so incredibly loud.
I mean you felt it rumble your whole body while
you're on the dance or just stand in.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
The music Box had the same vibrant, infectious energy of
the warehouse and continued to provide a safe space for black,
brown and queer people, but it was in a new
location with a refined sound. Even the architecture and equipment
at the music Box was different.
Speaker 8 (31:00):
So there's this legacy of black musical creativity that precedes
the development of house music culture in the city that
I think is tied to like the actual industrial spaces,
you know, the brick walls that held the sound in
particular ways, the huge lofted ceilings, the buckling wood floors,
Like those things matter when you party, right, Like, it's
(31:22):
not just what you're hearing and the sound system you're
hearing it on, but it's the vibe and the vibrations
of the space.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
The space was like the Paradise Garage, an iconic club
in New York, and we'll spend some time at the
garage later on in this series. But what you need
to know now is just how influential clubs crafted by
black creatives were in the seventies and eighties. The music
Box was kind of like a dark rectangle. At one
end there was a mass of speakers along a wall.
(31:54):
At the other end, there was a DJ booth playing
out the propulsing, pounding sounds of a new netic kind
of house music. The music Box had something different, you
could call it a special acetate up their sleeves. They'd
given a new DJ the creative freedom to add his
own spin on this newfound religion that was house music,
(32:17):
and that DJ was Ron Hardy. Ron Hardy started his
career doing DJ sets at gay clubs in Chicago, playing
his favorite songs to underground crowds, and he gained a
reputation for playing music from different genres with a manic
kind of energy.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
And that was the genius of ron Hardy.
Speaker 11 (32:36):
It wasn't just that he played what was typical dance music,
but he played dance music, which was you know, disco
from the seventies, some dance from the eighties, a lot
of Italo disco.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
But he also played a lot of jazz, funk and
dance floor jazz, even some rock inspired stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
He took the classics made them feel new and took
you on a journey.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
What was so dope about it was that even though
he could play new songs and so many different genres,
all within a matter of sixty minutes, the vibe was
always consistent, the music was always thumpy.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Ron was a pretty heavy drug user, which influenced the
music he listened to and the way he played Heroin
slowed the world down for him. When he DJ'ed at
the music box, he would hear the music playing slower
than it actually was, so he would pick up the
tempo and make it play faster. It created a frenetic, manic,
(33:39):
but addictive sense of movement on the dance floor, and
this new music changed the way people danced. All of
a sudden, people were moving their bodies in a new way.
There was one song that encompassed that new sound.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Okay, so there's a song called Jack Your Biden.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Jack Jack dejact your body Jack You bud deck jackub
deck your body Jack Jack dejack you deck your body,
Jack you bud deck jackub.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Deck your body Jack Jack Jack Jack your body jack
Jack Jack Jack yourbody Jack your body means that you
would kind of go into a little trance and start
your body would start jerking really hard. It would have
called jack your body.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Jacking became a new style of dancing that captured the
energy that Ron brought to house music. It was faster
and more frenetic.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And that's what they liked about Ron Hardy.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Ron pioneered fast paced house music and it really set
him apart from other DJs, even from Frankie.
Speaker 8 (34:39):
It's not like they had really different repertoires, but Ron
would beat out these amateur beat tracks, especially into the
mid eighties when younger producers start really making music in Chicago,
and he.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
Would play the music with a harder edge.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
House music had started at the warehouse with Frankie, but
it truly broke out at the music box with Ron.
Hardy catapulted house to the forefront of dance music, and
without his influence, house just wouldn't be what it is
or as popular as it is today.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Ron played with conviction.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
It was like somebody had a gun to this dad.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
He played that shit like he meant it.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
His sets had a bit of a kick to them.
There was fight in those songs, and music was his
greatest weapon. He played tracks that made black, brown, and
queer people feel welcome but he also played tracks to
fight back because Ron used his music to stand up
for his people, his community.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
One night, the police raided the music box.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
They showed up on the dance floor and killed the vibe.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
They came on the dance floor, they had U turn
on the light, so you know, there's lots of drugs
dan and so everybody's trying to throw their drugs under
the stage in the back so they don't have them on.
So everybodys throwing their drugs under the stage. Police walking
around checking Id's making sure every is at least eighteen,
because you had to be at at least eighteen to
get in, and you know, patting some people down, make
(36:06):
sure they don't have weapons or drugs, things like that.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
But while the lights were on and people stopped dancing,
Ron kept the music going.
Speaker 5 (36:15):
He kept playing music.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
He's still doing blands making, you know, playing sounds, and
then all of a sudden, as we're being harassed, he
puts on the walk.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
By the time, Ron wasn't going to let the police
ruin the party without putting up some kind of fight.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
There's a part that he edited where it says we
don't like policemen, and he looped it.
Speaker 12 (36:35):
Over and over and over and over. So while we're
getting searched, he's got the music on and it's real.
It's low, but it's low enough for everybody here. And
they go, we don't like policemen, we don't like policemen.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
And I'm just thinking it was something going, oh shit,
we are going to jail tonight.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
But Ron was always in control. He knew what he
was doing. Even when he was poking the police with
his music, he was a fierce advocate for his community,
even from behind the DJ booth.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Fortunately we didn't go to jail, but the cops were
really pissed in the Sergeant Kenny.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
You gonna have to turn that shit off.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
But he got the point across that night to the police.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
I love that moment in time, to be able to
tell the police, it'screw you, we're not doing shit, but
we're having.
Speaker 5 (37:19):
A good time. Leave us alone.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
That was kind of the way Ron operated. No one
could get in the way of him and the environment
he was creating with his music.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
I've been to.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
Other clubs, and they've been some pretty cool clubs.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
They were nice, but they could nothing ever matched that.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
The music Box was the kind of place that was
just there for you. There was this real sense of
community in Chicago house music, and while Ron and Frankie
weren't exactly friends, there was a sense of community in
the house music scene that bound them together.
Speaker 10 (37:52):
I remember after the Pride Parade one year here, Frankie
would always go to Belmont Rocks. That's an area on
the Lake Trunt of Chicago, on the North Side, and
he would always spend music at Belmont Rocks.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
After the Pride Creak Game, Pride.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Careade, well, one year we were out there and it
started raining.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
So Frankie started packing up his equipment.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
But then but Rani is like, let's go down to
the club.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
We can't have a party at the club.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
And it was just little stuff like that, just those
impromptu parties, those wonderful marathons.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
The camaraderie it was.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
It was a feeling that's so hard to describe and
put into words, but it's something I wish everyone could feel.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
That camaraderie came from being right there at the birth
and growth of house music. Frankie and Ron had worked
at different clubs at different times, but together they'd created
a sound that changed music forever, a sound that's in
the very bones of dance music. The music box and
(38:58):
the Warehouse don't exist anymore, and both DJs died far
too young. Frankie Knuckles died in twenty fourteen at the
age of fifty nine, but before he left us he
had become my family and a mentor. And Ron Hardy
died in nineteen ninety two. He was just thirty four.
But the music made and pioneered in those clubs by
(39:19):
those people remains alive. House music changed the spirit of Chicago.
Speaker 8 (39:25):
I think Chicago can teach us a lot about musical
diversity and how people with different tastes can actually share
musical space in surprising ways.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
The city knows it too. They named a section of
the road on South Jefferson Street after Frankie Knuckles.
Speaker 8 (39:42):
You can't really throw a stone at a househead in
Chicago without hearing about the Warehouse. The Warehouse is the
club where Chicago's house music cultures were incubated.
Speaker 5 (39:53):
It's the space that started what became a movement.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
The genre, of course, is ever last.
Speaker 8 (40:01):
I imagine if he was alive today, he'd take you
right up to the present moment, but never you know,
forgetting where it comes from or where his audience has been.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
But it's also what their music did. Its ability to
open space for black, Latino and queer people specifically, that
is part of its major significance.
Speaker 8 (40:21):
There's something that people are trying to tap into, which
is about connection, which is about release, which is about
just like shedding the baggage of your everyday life. I
think we all need these spaces, whether we know it
or not.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
That was just a place where you were free and
you felt free. And that's what house music does to you.
That's what where house music does to you. It makes
you feel free.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
These two DJs changed the game, and artists today are
still being influenced by house music. Megastars like Beyonce and
Drake dedicated major studio albums to house music in twenty
twenty two. Just listen to Renaissance and honestly never mind.
The influence is so clear. Beyonce went on to win
(41:13):
a twenty twenty three Grammy for Renaissance for Best Dance
Electronic Album, and in her acceptance speech, she specifically thanked
the LGBTQ plus community.
Speaker 8 (41:24):
I'd like to thank the queer community for your love
and for inventing this genre. I think it would be
hard to point to an artist that is doing dance
music today that doesn't owe some debt to you know,
Frankieknuckles and Ron Hardy in the work that they did
at the Warehouse in the music Box.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
In the next episode, we're going to explore a club
on the other side of the ocean that ushered in
the era of acid House. We're heading to Manchester, England
to visit the Hacienda. The History of the World's Greatest
Nightclubs is produced by Neon Hum Media for London Audio
(42:03):
and iHeartRadio for London Audio. Our executive producers are Paris Hilton,
Bruce Robertson and Bruce Gersh. The executive producer for Neon
Humm is Jonathan Hirsch. Our producer is Rufio Faith Masarua.
Navani Otero and Liz Sanchez are our associate producers. Our
series producer is Crystal Genesis. Our editor is Stephanie Serrano.
(42:28):
This episode was written by Kate Michigan and Rufio Faith
Masarura and fact check by Katherine Newhan. Theme and original
music by Asha Avanovich. Our sound design engineers are Sam
bar and Josh Hahn. I'm your host Alternate and we'll
see you next time. On the history of the world's
(42:49):
greatest nightclubs,
When we think of nightclubs, the sound that usually springs
to mind is that pounding beat, that repetitive but addictive sound,
about twice as fast as a heartbeat. It makes you
want to nod your head and move your body and
get up to dance. The pounding beat at the heart
(00:22):
of house music has an infectious energy about it, and
when house music was born in Chicago in the nineteen seventies,
it drew people from all across the city to an
old building in downtown Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
My name is Karen McCormick. I am a hairstylist in Chicago,
and I'm definitely a house head.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Karen grew up in Chicago in the seventies and she
saw firsthand the profound ways the city was changing. It
had world class sports teams and became home to one
of America's first city funded public art programs. The skyline
got taller, and the construction of the famous Sears Tower
made the city home to what was then the world's
(01:07):
tallest building.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Chicago had changed, the politics had changed, everything changed.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
The city had become the bustling metropolis that we now
know as the capital of the Midwest the Third Coast.
But there was something else in the air too, a
new sound.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
My brother Albert McCormick was a promoter, a huge promoter
in Chicago, Illinois, and he promoted teenage parties and he
was very, very successful at it.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
He'd heard rumors about a hot spot in town playing
new music. So one night Albert had an idea.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
He said, come on, I got this place. I want
to take you too. Now I was like, okay, let's
all go.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
So they got dressed up.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
We were wearing the tight l taking jeans and the
halter tops, and I had on I would never forget
I had on these glitter clods. They were so sharp.
I love the glitter clods.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
And going out to this new club meant leaving for
the party when most of the city was fast.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Asleep because it didn't open till twelve o'clock at night.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
The sky was dark and the moon was bright. As
they traveled downtown, Karen and her glitter clogs walked down
a cobblestone street that led her to the warehouse.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It was at to US six South Jefferson, but back
in the day, to six South Jefferson was a dismal street.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
But the venue on the street was huge and majestic.
It had an exposed brick facade and big curved windows.
There was nothing nearby except for the line that stretched
around the building and the music that spilled out onto
the streets.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It was a long line. Everyone was just trying to
get into this place.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Karen followed the line.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
As people ahead of her started to go in, the
music got louder, guiding her closer until she got to
the entrance.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And you had to walk up a hall of stairs.
At the hallow stairs, there were two men that greet you.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
The men were polite and had smiles on their faces,
but they were the gatekeepers.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
And you don't know if you're going to get in
or not, because they did turn people away. And so
I was like, what is this, what are we going to.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
But her brother reassured her and.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
He said, come on, just come on in inside.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
It all came into focus.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
When we went in. We walked up the stairs, we
got in and it was like, I mean, just people
were everywhere. They were sitting, they were dancing, they were
on the floor, they were congregating.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Karen had entered the warehouse and it was a visceral experience,
one that held Karen by the shoulders.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
And grabbed hold of all her senses.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
The moment she stepped inside, the club opened itself up
to Karen, and she dived in head first.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
It was an entire.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
World She had no idea existed a club that was
about to transform the sound of dance music.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Everybody was just twirling and dancing, and hips and moving
and people going on their knees and steps. It was everything.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
People had come from all over the city to experience
the Warehouse.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You had all wh of life there. There was no boundaries,
There was no one that was not welcome to each other.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
The club was filled with all kinds of people from
the black, Latino and queer community, and they'd all converged
onto the dance floor. It was magical, people from all
over Chicago dancing to the euphoric sound of a new
genre being created right there in the city.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Your ears is so filled with good music.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
The music sounded a little bit like disco, but there
was something about it that Karen had never heard before,
and it flowed through the people who danced at the
Warehouse as if they were simply just a vessel for
the DJ. Karen didn't know yet how profound an effect
the Warehouse would have on her or the city. That
(05:53):
night she was standing smack dab in the middle of
a sea of change. Just as she was, the world
was getting an introduction to house music.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Do you hear this music going boom boom boom boom boom.
You just hear this boom and you're like, what is that?
And then you go down the stairs where it's Pitts flack,
but you see strobe lights going, and they had different
lights going. But more than anything, the room was just
(06:31):
filled with music. The equipment that they had in that
place was like phenomenal, and so it beat every part
of that floor.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
The music that played at the Warehouse was unlike anything
anyone had ever heard before, and soon it would go
from being called warehouse music to just house music. Because
house music was born right there at two six South
Jefferson Avenue in downtown Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
We didn't even think of it as club culture. You
went to that party and you released all your demons.
That's how it worked.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
With dance music that broke boundaries.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
The music moved through you. The base was so incredibly loud.
I mean you felt it rumble your whole body while
you're on the dance or just standing so you couldn't
help but to dance.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It didn't matter who you were, what you were, where
you came from, It did not matter. What mattered is
that we all came together and we all felt one thing,
and that was the music.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
House music would change lives and transform the sound of
the dance floor, and its story started at the warehouse
where a new sound became a new religion, followed by
people from around the city and then the world.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
However it got its name, it's one of the hottest
things going and as Jelavin reports, only be a matter
of time before house musicians become heroes in their own home.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
From London Audio iHeartRadio and executive producer Paris Hilton, This
is the History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs a twelve
part podcast about the iconic venues and people that revolutionized
how we party. Some of the world's most legendary nightclubs
were known for the unique community they welcomed, others for
(08:33):
the cultural movements they started, and some for the musicians
and DJs they introduced to the world. The best nightclubs
champion new music, transform lives, and provide an escape from
life's pressures.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
One more thing. This is the history of some of the.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
World's greatest nightclubs. Not a ranking of every club in
the world. It's an exploration of the spaces, people, and
club nights that made a lasting impact on nightlife and
music today. I'm your host, Ultronatee. I'm a singer, songwriter, musician,
and I found my purpose in club culture. This is
(09:11):
episode four. The Warehouse and Music Box, Chicago, Illinois. The
Warehouse was ground zero for the rise of house music.
It was music made by and for the black, Latino
and queer communities who were looking for a safe space
to get together, let loose, and dance their worries away.
(09:34):
House music began at the Warehouse, but when the Warehouse
closed and its owner opened up a new club called
the Music Box, it became more vibrant and multi layered
before it's skyrocketed to become the genre we now know
and love.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
In the process, house music.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Broke some serious boundaries and left an indelible mark on
pop and dance music. Disco had dominated the music scene
of the late sixties and early seventies, and so many
of the musicians that had been central to the scene
were from Chicago. The Emotions had released Best of My Love,
(10:16):
which had poured onto dance floors across the city. An
Earth Wind and Fire had commanded the charts with songs
like Boogie Wonderland, but by the late seventies, disco music
was on the decline. Some of the backlash was because
people thought it wasn't political enough, and some of it
(10:36):
was because there was a new wave of rock music
taking over the music scene, but a significant amount of
the backlash was rooted in racism and homophobia. The anti
disco movement grew louder and stronger, culminating in what happened
on July twelfth, nineteen seventy nine, the day Disco died.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
It started at a baseball game.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
The Chicago White Sox were playing the Detroit Tigers in
a doubleheader game. The local Chicago rock station w LUP
had partnered with the team to host the Disco Demolition Night.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
It started off as just a stunt.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Posters had been stuck up across the city saying anyone
who brought a disco record to the park could watch
the game for ninety eight cents. In return, before the
second game started, they would get to watch all the
disco albums get blown up. It was a tongue in
cheek thing because the Socks had hosted a disco night
a couple of years before, and the rock station wanted
(11:43):
to make a joke about the fact that there was
a backlash amongst their fans to disco music. But things
got serious really quickly.
Speaker 7 (11:53):
Between games at tonight's doubleheader, a local disc jockey blew
up disco records in Sutterfield, and a crowd responded by
rushing the viear.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
The stunt had ended in a riot that saw tens
of thousands of fans storm the pitch, throwing glass bottles, firecrackers,
and lighters onto the field as they burnt records. It
was a huge deal. Ask around Chicago. Everyone remembers it.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Yeah, my name's Micah Salkind.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Micah wrote the book Do You Remember House Chicago's Queer
of Color Undergrounds. It's a history of house music in
Chicago that profiles the black, brown, and queer architects behind
the genre. The Disco demolition was one of the major
markers of the decline of disco, but the genre had
(12:47):
been on its way out for a while by then.
Speaker 8 (12:50):
You know, in the late seventies, the bottom of the
American disco industry drops out.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Major industry players had slowly been divesting from the genre.
Speaker 8 (13:00):
You know, no one's no one's trying to pay some
French horn player and cellist at Sigma Studios in Philadelphia
to recording new disco music like they were in the
late seventies.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
But the sound didn't just disappear.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Black, brown and queer people across the city still love
the sense of freedom and escapism the disco age had
ushered in.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
So they set out to give it a new life.
Speaker 8 (13:25):
Young entrepreneurial musicians and some of some of whom totally amateur,
some of whom had other you know, musical training and abilities.
We're trying to approximate the energy of that disco music
and you know, creating like this what now sounds as.
Speaker 5 (13:43):
Though it must have been so futuristic.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
At the time, they had the building blocks of disco music,
but they wanted to transform it.
Speaker 8 (13:51):
But I think for them it was just really like,
all right, we have access to these tools, we need
new tracks, like, let's make it just trying to recreate
a sound that that didn't exist anymore using new tools.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
The sound they created with those new tools was house music.
But to understand where it came from, we have to
go to the place where it started, the warehouse.
Speaker 9 (14:16):
My name is Robert Williams, and I'm from New York City, Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Robert was a young black man who'd been born and
raised in New York, but in the seventies he realized
he needed a change.
Speaker 9 (14:29):
I had gotten tired of the red rage of New York.
He was challenging, and my aunt suggested that I had
come to a more late back environment. So she suggests
to Chicago, and I was like, okay. I wasn't overly
thrilled for a moment, but you know, I said, okay, I'll
check it out.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
So he did.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
But Robert soon found out that Chicago wasn't just laid back.
It was a straight up snoozefest.
Speaker 9 (14:58):
He was very boring here to me because I was
used to the bright light and the activity of New
York City. So it was like going from the city
to the country in a sense.
Speaker 10 (15:09):
To me.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Things slowed all the way down for him. New York
was going through a tumultuous time in the seventies, but
it was establishing itself as a hub for some of
the greatest minds and artists in the country. Chicago, on
the other hand, didn't have as much to offer him,
So Robert took advantage of the fact that there wasn't
much going on in the boring old city and started
(15:33):
throwing parties to bring it to life.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
You know.
Speaker 8 (15:36):
Robert was a part of a collective called US Studios
and Day Through Parties that other lost spaces in the
near west side of Chicago, the West Loop and the
South Loop.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
The city already had a black and clear underground party culture.
Speaker 9 (15:52):
We just go like dis first to so speak, socially
or commercially like the clubs and what have you. Then
it means you kind of like went underground.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
People threw parties across the city, but the scene needed
a real venue to take it to the next level.
So Robert decided to sign a lease on a building downtown.
Speaker 9 (16:18):
The building was a three story It was built in
the early twenties and it was out our Deco and
it was like three thousand square foot per four It
was nice space.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Robert commissioned his friend Richard Long, who did sound design
for the legendary Studio fifty four, to do the sound
system for the warehouse.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
But the club was missing something.
Speaker 9 (16:46):
I needed a DJ, so I had to go to
New York and ask them of our friends to come
healthy with the Friday.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
There was a musical shift happening in the late seventies.
Disco was out, but something new was on the horizon.
Robert could hear it, and he had just the right
person in mind to bring it to life on the
Warehouse dance floor. You see, there were two DJs he
knew from back home in New York that he thought
would be a perfect fit for the Warehouse, Frankie Knuckles
(17:15):
and Larry Levan, two DJs who would go on to
become musical legends. But when Robert first met them, they
weren't DJs. They were just annoying kids.
Speaker 9 (17:26):
They were truant when they were like fifteen and fourteen.
I was like eighteen or nineteen, and I was working
for New York Department of Probation and they were under
my case slows yep.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Robert was their probation officer.
Speaker 9 (17:43):
They were juveniles, so I was supposed to be their counselor.
But I was going to the club just like they were.
They were under age going through the club and I wasn't.
But I wasn't exactly being a mentor. I had to
restruct our relationship.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
But when they grew up and were finally old enough
to actually be at the club, Robert began to see
how talented they were. Larry Levan had to stay in
New York because he was in the middle of creating
Paradise Garage, which you'll hear more about in a few episodes.
But Frankie Knuckles accepted Robert's invite to be the DJ
at The Warehouse in Chicago. Even as a kid, it
(18:25):
was very clear that Frankie Knuckles had a gift.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
He was an artist.
Speaker 9 (18:29):
Frankie attended Persons School of Design in New York before DJing,
so he was an illustrator and artist.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
He developed his skills while DJing at New York's Continental Baths,
and Robert really believed in Frankie. So when the Warehouse
opened in nineteen seventy seven, it opened with Frankie Knuckles
as its resident DJ. It was only a matter of
time before crowds began to travel to downtown Chicago to
hear the new sound Frankie was crafting.
Speaker 8 (19:00):
The Warehouse is the birthplace of house music culture, and
I don't think it'd be exaggerating to say. It's also
where the seeds for house music as a genre were planted.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
They didn't know it just yet, of course, but Frankie
would pretty much change the game, earning himself an international reputation.
Speaker 8 (19:20):
Frankie Knuckles is often described as the godfather of house
music in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Frankie had his ear to the ground. He took underground
tracks and put his own spin on it. He knew
exactly how to make the music he was playing sound
and feel like something new. His music was welcoming to
everyone on the dance floor, and Frankie had a way
of mixing his sets together so that everyone could see
(19:46):
themselves in the songs, because for Frankie, it was all
about the song and using the vocals to anchor the
crowd to the dance floor.
Speaker 8 (19:55):
If you've got people from all these different places in
the room, you need to play something for the those
Latino kids from the Northwest Side who love freestyle music.
You need to play something for the Black kids from
the South Side who grew up listening to you know,
funking soul that their parents played.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Frankie became famous for mixing together underground disco soul and
electronic music, them beefing up the rhythm with drum machines
to really get the crowd moving.
Speaker 8 (20:21):
The DJs were cutting across these social boundaries in the
city of Chicago and creating something that met everyone's needs.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
The music Frankie was playing didn't have its own name yet,
but it would soon be known to the world as house.
Speaker 8 (20:38):
You know, if you analyze the music like from a
musicological standpoint and look at like what people were doing
with drum machines, samplers and synthesizers during the mid eighties.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
It sounds like this.
Speaker 8 (20:51):
It's for the floor dance music that is connected to
a history of disco, R and B, funk and soul.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
It's also a whole culture.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
House music was the sound of the bass and snare drums,
the offbeat high hats, and the around one hundred and
twenty beats per minutent tempo. But it was also the
way that DJ's like Frankie Knuckles played it. Frankie had
an ear for this type of music. He felt each
track in his body and wanted you to feel it too.
(21:23):
Frankie made sure that you felt it in your soul.
Remember Karen McCormick. She spent a lot of time dancing
to Frankie's tracks.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
He made sure that you heard lyrics or what the
music was saying, and the music itself was on such
a high lift bass that it made you just move
your body. It didn't give a dance, it didn't have
a name. You just moved your body and it would
bring people together.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
He played each song with deep intention.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And if Frankie knew that it was a good song,
He's gonna make you hear the song. When Frankie would
listen to music, he's not just listening to just some sound.
He's listening to every thing that the person put into
that music, whether it was their strings of violins to
(22:19):
where it was the voice itself. When it came down
to it, he knew how to blend it all. People
could come from all corners.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Of Chicago flocking to Warehouse after midnight just to hear
Frankie play. His sets became so popular in fact, the
stores across the city stocked up their windows and shelves
with the music that Frankie had played at the Warehouse.
It became known as warehouse music, and then after a
while just house music. Frankie Knuckles was the godfather of
(22:49):
house music. He was the resident DJ at the club
that the sound got its name from, and his sets
pioneered a new way of blending music that would go
on to become one of them the most well known
and loved genres in the world. It would go on
to influence clubs like the Hacienda, a club all the
way in Manchester, England, which we'll hear more about in
(23:11):
the next episode, as well as offshoots and reinterpretations of
the Sound all around the world. But the appeal of
the Warehouse wasn't just tied to the music Frankie played.
It was the culture, the community, the ritual they were building.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
We were there every Saturday, you know, the same people
and more were there every Saturday.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
After her first time at the Warehouse, Karen went back
again and again.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
The Warehouse was her place.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
You prepared your week for Saturday. You know, you were
like what am I wearing? And you didn't care how
you looked the rest of the week until Saturday.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Monday through Friday you could be in sweats and a
T shirt. But on Saturday night you looked good and
you dressed so you could dance guys were tons of
leather headbands, tank tops, and girls wore big earrings and
even bigger hair. Once I spent the whole week making
Genie pants for myself and my crew for Saturday night
(24:15):
to show up, and that was it, our stage, our runway.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I will always make sure I had on leg warmers
because you wanted to keep your legs, you know, flexible,
So I would always wear something movable where I can
move in it.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Because people showed up ready to really dance, and the
warehouse wasn't just a place to party. It was a
safe haven too. Remember the backlash against disco music. It
wasn't just about the music, it was about.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
The culture of disco music.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Which had become a home for people of color and
the queer community. When the music had gone underground, they'd
gone underground too. Dancing at house in places like the
warehouse to get away from the harassment and discrimination they
were facing outside.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
The warehouse is born out of a desire to find
a space where black men in particular, but also black lesbians,
bisexual folks, straight people, you know, all kinds of people
could come together without being asked for multiple forms.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
Of identification or given a hard time on the dance glare.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
At the bar.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
It was more than just a physical location. It was
an idea, a feel. It was a lot bigger than
its physical presence.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
The music was about a kind of social freedom that
you couldn't find even in white gay spaces. So it
also you know, it's like black folks partied in different
ways in part because their musical traditions were you know,
born in black spaces, not in white cultures.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
The Warehouse was a place where these folks were free
to truly be themselves without judgment, to escape what was
transpiring both socially and politically. It was a place to
be free to let your guard down.
Speaker 8 (26:07):
You know, there's something about that time of day, right
like the time between ten pm and seven am, where
the normal rhythms of urban life shift and everyone's asleep,
and this is a time.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
Where people can get out of their heads.
Speaker 8 (26:25):
And whether they're doing that with the assistance of drugs
or with just the sheer exertion of their dancing, you know,
I think there is a spiritual quality to that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
People went to the Warehouse every Saturday night to experience
what true freedom felt like. There was a spiritual component
to those nights too. For those who felt discriminated against
and unwelcome by the churches of their childhood, there was
an answer, you know.
Speaker 8 (26:52):
Black folks who maybe have been disconnected from the way
that the church would support that kind of upliftedness, or
black women folks who had that experience, or queer folks
who are searching for something in the city that their
families in the kind of like rural or suburban world
couldn't provide them.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
The warehouse became a church.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
The songs felt like gospel, and dancing felt like worship.
It was a hollowed space, and like church, it was
a place to return to week after week.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
You know, if they were gay and they couldn't go
to church anymore because their family.
Speaker 8 (27:30):
Cast them out, they could commune under the supervision of
you know, Frankie Knuckles. It would be Sunday morning and
they it would be a kind of like continuation of
the party, and you know, maybe Frankie would play some
gospel track at the end of the night to kind
of send people on their way.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Frankie knew what he was doing, he knew what his
dancers needed, and he delivered playing music that mimicked the
way acquire at church, would sing to the crowd to
give people a place to belong, to reach out with
his music and tell them they were loved. The Warehouse
was designed by queer and black creators and became a
(28:06):
place for folks who felt othered in their daily lives
to feel safe, to be temporarily insulated from the racism, homophobia,
and misogyny that remained rampant in the outside world, but
also to express joy. Next, we'll dive into the story
(28:27):
of DJ ron Hardy and the Music Box and how
he took house music.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
To new heights.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
By nineteen seventy six, the political tide in Chicago had turned.
The city's longtime mayor had died, and when his replacement,
Jane Byrne, stepped into office, she began to change the
look and feel of downtown Chicago.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
The downtown area was just changing.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
The renovations happening in that part of the city made
it even harder to keep places like the Warehouse alivetown
changed and became more gentrified. The lease became too expensive
for Robert to keep running the Warehouse, so the club
closed its doors for the final time in nineteen eighty four,
and while the Warehouse was closing for good. House music
(29:15):
wasn't going anywhere. Things had really only just begun because
soon there would be a new DJ in town who
would adapt the sound and give it a twist. Listening
to house music for the first time changed people. Once
they heard it, they wanted more and they would follow
it wherever it went. But house music had become bigger
(29:36):
than Frankie in the Warehouse. House was infectious. House music
didn't just belong to the Warehouse. It became the sound
of the city. And Robert, who created the Warehouse, found
another location. He signed a lease on a former industrial
building at sixteen thirty two South Indiana av And. In
(29:57):
February of nineteen eighty three. His new c was born,
The Music Box, and this is the club where house
music really took off.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
My name is Stacy Collins and I worked at the
music Box as security.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
The music Box wasn't a replica of the Warehouse. It
took the sound of house music and the spirit of
underground clubs and created something new.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
That sound system was something I have never experienced in
my life, don't I can't imagine how anybody could go
to that dance floor and not want to dance because.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
The music moved through you. The base was so incredibly loud.
I mean you felt it rumble your whole body while
you're on the dance or just stand in.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
The music Box had the same vibrant, infectious energy of
the warehouse and continued to provide a safe space for black,
brown and queer people, but it was in a new
location with a refined sound. Even the architecture and equipment
at the music Box was different.
Speaker 8 (31:00):
So there's this legacy of black musical creativity that precedes
the development of house music culture in the city that
I think is tied to like the actual industrial spaces,
you know, the brick walls that held the sound in
particular ways, the huge lofted ceilings, the buckling wood floors,
Like those things matter when you party, right, Like, it's
(31:22):
not just what you're hearing and the sound system you're
hearing it on, but it's the vibe and the vibrations
of the space.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
The space was like the Paradise Garage, an iconic club
in New York, and we'll spend some time at the
garage later on in this series. But what you need
to know now is just how influential clubs crafted by
black creatives were in the seventies and eighties. The music
Box was kind of like a dark rectangle. At one
end there was a mass of speakers along a wall.
(31:54):
At the other end, there was a DJ booth playing
out the propulsing, pounding sounds of a new netic kind
of house music. The music Box had something different, you
could call it a special acetate up their sleeves. They'd
given a new DJ the creative freedom to add his
own spin on this newfound religion that was house music,
(32:17):
and that DJ was Ron Hardy. Ron Hardy started his
career doing DJ sets at gay clubs in Chicago, playing
his favorite songs to underground crowds, and he gained a
reputation for playing music from different genres with a manic
kind of energy.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
And that was the genius of ron Hardy.
Speaker 11 (32:36):
It wasn't just that he played what was typical dance music,
but he played dance music, which was you know, disco
from the seventies, some dance from the eighties, a lot
of Italo disco.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
But he also played a lot of jazz, funk and
dance floor jazz, even some rock inspired stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
He took the classics made them feel new and took
you on a journey.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
What was so dope about it was that even though
he could play new songs and so many different genres,
all within a matter of sixty minutes, the vibe was
always consistent, the music was always thumpy.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Ron was a pretty heavy drug user, which influenced the
music he listened to and the way he played Heroin
slowed the world down for him. When he DJ'ed at
the music box, he would hear the music playing slower
than it actually was, so he would pick up the
tempo and make it play faster. It created a frenetic, manic,
(33:39):
but addictive sense of movement on the dance floor, and
this new music changed the way people danced. All of
a sudden, people were moving their bodies in a new way.
There was one song that encompassed that new sound.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Okay, so there's a song called Jack Your Biden.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Jack Jack dejact your body Jack You bud deck jackub
deck your body Jack Jack dejack you deck your body,
Jack you bud deck jackub.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Deck your body Jack Jack Jack Jack your body jack
Jack Jack Jack yourbody Jack your body means that you
would kind of go into a little trance and start
your body would start jerking really hard. It would have
called jack your body.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Jacking became a new style of dancing that captured the
energy that Ron brought to house music. It was faster
and more frenetic.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And that's what they liked about Ron Hardy.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Ron pioneered fast paced house music and it really set
him apart from other DJs, even from Frankie.
Speaker 8 (34:39):
It's not like they had really different repertoires, but Ron
would beat out these amateur beat tracks, especially into the
mid eighties when younger producers start really making music in Chicago,
and he.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
Would play the music with a harder edge.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
House music had started at the warehouse with Frankie, but
it truly broke out at the music box with Ron.
Hardy catapulted house to the forefront of dance music, and
without his influence, house just wouldn't be what it is
or as popular as it is today.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Ron played with conviction.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
It was like somebody had a gun to this dad.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
He played that shit like he meant it.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
His sets had a bit of a kick to them.
There was fight in those songs, and music was his
greatest weapon. He played tracks that made black, brown, and
queer people feel welcome but he also played tracks to
fight back because Ron used his music to stand up
for his people, his community.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
One night, the police raided the music box.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
They showed up on the dance floor and killed the vibe.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
They came on the dance floor, they had U turn
on the light, so you know, there's lots of drugs
dan and so everybody's trying to throw their drugs under
the stage in the back so they don't have them on.
So everybodys throwing their drugs under the stage. Police walking
around checking Id's making sure every is at least eighteen,
because you had to be at at least eighteen to
get in, and you know, patting some people down, make
(36:06):
sure they don't have weapons or drugs, things like that.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
But while the lights were on and people stopped dancing,
Ron kept the music going.
Speaker 5 (36:15):
He kept playing music.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
He's still doing blands making, you know, playing sounds, and
then all of a sudden, as we're being harassed, he
puts on the walk.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
By the time, Ron wasn't going to let the police
ruin the party without putting up some kind of fight.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
There's a part that he edited where it says we
don't like policemen, and he looped it.
Speaker 12 (36:35):
Over and over and over and over. So while we're
getting searched, he's got the music on and it's real.
It's low, but it's low enough for everybody here. And
they go, we don't like policemen, we don't like policemen.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
And I'm just thinking it was something going, oh shit,
we are going to jail tonight.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
But Ron was always in control. He knew what he
was doing. Even when he was poking the police with
his music, he was a fierce advocate for his community,
even from behind the DJ booth.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
Fortunately we didn't go to jail, but the cops were
really pissed in the Sergeant Kenny.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
You gonna have to turn that shit off.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
But he got the point across that night to the police.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
I love that moment in time, to be able to
tell the police, it'screw you, we're not doing shit, but
we're having.
Speaker 5 (37:19):
A good time. Leave us alone.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
That was kind of the way Ron operated. No one
could get in the way of him and the environment
he was creating with his music.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
I've been to.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
Other clubs, and they've been some pretty cool clubs.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
They were nice, but they could nothing ever matched that.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
The music Box was the kind of place that was
just there for you. There was this real sense of
community in Chicago house music, and while Ron and Frankie
weren't exactly friends, there was a sense of community in
the house music scene that bound them together.
Speaker 10 (37:52):
I remember after the Pride Parade one year here, Frankie
would always go to Belmont Rocks. That's an area on
the Lake Trunt of Chicago, on the North Side, and
he would always spend music at Belmont Rocks.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
After the Pride Creak Game, Pride.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Careade, well, one year we were out there and it
started raining.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
So Frankie started packing up his equipment.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
But then but Rani is like, let's go down to
the club.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
We can't have a party at the club.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
And it was just little stuff like that, just those
impromptu parties, those wonderful marathons.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
The camaraderie it was.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
It was a feeling that's so hard to describe and
put into words, but it's something I wish everyone could feel.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
That camaraderie came from being right there at the birth
and growth of house music. Frankie and Ron had worked
at different clubs at different times, but together they'd created
a sound that changed music forever, a sound that's in
the very bones of dance music. The music box and
(38:58):
the Warehouse don't exist anymore, and both DJs died far
too young. Frankie Knuckles died in twenty fourteen at the
age of fifty nine, but before he left us he
had become my family and a mentor. And Ron Hardy
died in nineteen ninety two. He was just thirty four.
But the music made and pioneered in those clubs by
(39:19):
those people remains alive. House music changed the spirit of Chicago.
Speaker 8 (39:25):
I think Chicago can teach us a lot about musical
diversity and how people with different tastes can actually share
musical space in surprising ways.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
The city knows it too. They named a section of
the road on South Jefferson Street after Frankie Knuckles.
Speaker 8 (39:42):
You can't really throw a stone at a househead in
Chicago without hearing about the Warehouse. The Warehouse is the
club where Chicago's house music cultures were incubated.
Speaker 5 (39:53):
It's the space that started what became a movement.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
The genre, of course, is ever last.
Speaker 8 (40:01):
I imagine if he was alive today, he'd take you
right up to the present moment, but never you know,
forgetting where it comes from or where his audience has been.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
But it's also what their music did. Its ability to
open space for black, Latino and queer people specifically, that
is part of its major significance.
Speaker 8 (40:21):
There's something that people are trying to tap into, which
is about connection, which is about release, which is about
just like shedding the baggage of your everyday life. I
think we all need these spaces, whether we know it
or not.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
That was just a place where you were free and
you felt free. And that's what house music does to you.
That's what where house music does to you. It makes
you feel free.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
These two DJs changed the game, and artists today are
still being influenced by house music. Megastars like Beyonce and
Drake dedicated major studio albums to house music in twenty
twenty two. Just listen to Renaissance and honestly never mind.
The influence is so clear. Beyonce went on to win
(41:13):
a twenty twenty three Grammy for Renaissance for Best Dance
Electronic Album, and in her acceptance speech, she specifically thanked
the LGBTQ plus community.
Speaker 8 (41:24):
I'd like to thank the queer community for your love
and for inventing this genre. I think it would be
hard to point to an artist that is doing dance
music today that doesn't owe some debt to you know,
Frankieknuckles and Ron Hardy in the work that they did
at the Warehouse in the music Box.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
In the next episode, we're going to explore a club
on the other side of the ocean that ushered in
the era of acid House. We're heading to Manchester, England
to visit the Hacienda. The History of the World's Greatest
Nightclubs is produced by Neon Hum Media for London Audio
(42:03):
and iHeartRadio for London Audio. Our executive producers are Paris Hilton,
Bruce Robertson and Bruce Gersh. The executive producer for Neon
Humm is Jonathan Hirsch. Our producer is Rufio Faith Masarua.
Navani Otero and Liz Sanchez are our associate producers. Our
series producer is Crystal Genesis. Our editor is Stephanie Serrano.
(42:28):
This episode was written by Kate Michigan and Rufio Faith
Masarura and fact check by Katherine Newhan. Theme and original
music by Asha Avanovich. Our sound design engineers are Sam
bar and Josh Hahn. I'm your host Alternate and we'll
see you next time. On the history of the world's
(42:49):
greatest nightclubs,
Host
Ultra Naté
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com